Cinema Eclectica

Best remembered for containing Damon Albarn's one film acting performance, as wet-behind-the-ears aspiring gangster Jason, this week's Pop Screen argues that Antonia Bird's 1997 movie Face deserves more credit. A British gangster movie made in that brief moment before Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels inspired every screenwriter in the country to write a gangster movie, it's a brutal postmortem on eighteen years of Conservative government disguised as a brutal heist-gone-wrong thriller. Those unexpected political grace notes - including an eyebrow-raising opening cameo! - are among the topics discussed by Mark and Graham in this episode, along with the film's savvy use of genre icon Ray Winstone, the rise and fall of the Blair-era London gangland thriller, and the baptism of fire Albarn received at the hands of Quadrophenia's Phil Davis. We also praise the late, much-missed Bird and her writer Ronan Bennett, and if that sounds like we've not left much room for discussion of Blur... ...well, you're right